A “silent” agroecology: the significance of unrecognized sociotechnical changes made by French farmers

Agroecology has been a focus of intense debate in France since 2012, when the idea was explicitly adopted as a national policy objective by theMinistry of Agriculture. This article intervenes in this debate by documenting and describing an under-recognized, “silent” agroecology practiced by conventional farmers contending with a variety of threats— economic, technical, and climatic—to their farming systems. Inspired by the sociology of development, the research summarized here shows how these farmers have relied on peerto- peer cooperation, and specifically on formal equipment-sharing arrangements, to develop a range of practices allowing for the ecological improvement of their farming systems. These farmers make few claims with regard to the environmental benefits of their innovations, however: instead, they emphasize their desire for improved farm autonomy. Out of respect for the social and professional dynamics within which they operate, moreover, these farmers tend to avoid ecological terms and topics in their peer-to-peer conversations. This “silence” is reinforced by the statistical tools used to report on French agriculture, which make little note of such farmers’ activities, effectively excluding these practices from assessments of the ecologization of French agriculture. Finally, given the challenges these farmers face in locating necessary resources elsewhere in the agrifood sector (suppliers, research and development, markets), the ecological benefits of these new practices are not always fully realized. Nevertheless, the scale and significance of this silent agroecology—the conditions for which are also present in other Western countries—suggest an urgent need to reorient public policy frameworks to better support the agroecological transition.